Emachine will not boot up

[ara002]

My emachine T6528 desktop PC will not boot up. It was bought around 2005. It worked fine up until the past 2 or 3 weeks. The first problem I was having was with the monitor. The flat screen it came with lost the red coloring in it, and the colors would flicker periodically. That wasn't really a big deal. I changed monitors and the flickering stopped, but still the red was completely gone from the screen showing black instead. That's not really a big concern for me. My problem now is the PC will not boot up. We had it plugged in and turned on connected to a surge protector. We had to unplug it to move some furniture that the wires were getting in the way of. Instead of shutting it down, my girlfriend just turned the power button off on the surge protector. Since then, when we try to boot it up, all we hear is the fan running. The blue light on the front is turned on. But nothing comes on any monitor we've hooked up to it. No light on the mouse or keyboards comes on either. Our primary concern is keeping the pictures and music that are saved on the hard drive but we would really like to salvage this computer if possible. This doesn't sound like anything that can be fixed over a discussion board, but what would be the best way to go about getting this taken care of? Any idea if this sounds typical, how much it would cost to get taken care of? Thanks for your help.

 

[raybay]

I am sorry to report you likely have one of the failed and unrepairable eMachines. The T6528 has a failure rate in our repair area of around 70 percent. It originally started manufacture in 2004, and most had died within two and a half years.
Sometimes it is the power supply, but mostly it is the motherboard. The hard drive, memory, CPU, cpu fan, optical drives are all good. Sometimes loading it up with memory will help a bit.
I would borrow a power supply that fits to test... but not an eMachines power supply. Any ATX power supply that is 300 watts are larger. If that does not help, you are wasting your time and money trying to fix it.
The motherboard replacement costs $179.50 plus shipping... and will also fail quickly.

You can replace the motherboard on eBay or from Directron, Frys, NewEgg, PCMall, TigerDirect, etc. for about $50, but then the eMachines Windows disk will not work... as it is keyed to the eeprom on the emachines motherboard.

Were you my relative, I would go out and find you a good used Dell or other replacement.
Good luck.

 

[vega]

Raybay is correct, I've dealt with a few of these machines, if yours has an inbuilt vga, then the problem is almost definitely the motherboard, the best thing to do is to replace the motherboard but keep all the other components as they are almost certainly not at fault.

Do not buy another e-machine board, look for a compatible board on ebay, you shouldn't have too much problem finding a board, and you should'nt have to pay the extortionate price e-machine are charging for one of their replacements!

 

[ara002]

Is it easy to replace a motherboard? Could someone with no experience do this? Also, what would I look for when searching for one? Is there a particular kind and how much would it cost? All I want is to save the data on the computer (pics, music, docs, etc). So replacing the motherboard would allow me to do this?

 

[vega]

Removing and replacing a motherboard isn't difficult, but great care must be taken to make sure that all connections are correct on your new board i.e front panel connectors, power ports, jumpers etc.

Take a good look at your motherboard, make a note of its layout,
Make a note of the positioning of the front panel connector pins, take a note of the exact model and make of the current board and ensure you get a compatible model which will work with your cpu and memory.

Dissembling your computers components is easy, once all the cards and cables are disconnected, the motherboard can be unscrewed from the pc case and the replacement slotted in, but beware of static electricity!

You can pick up a decent mobo for around £30-£60 on ebay.

If you do make a go of it, good luck!

 

[ara002]

so based on my description, you believe that replacing the motherboard will fix my problem? are you sure of this because i don't want to spend the money if it's something else.

 

[vega]

Yes, changing the motherboard will resolve the problem. If your computer is based around the amd 3500 cpu, then you need to purchase a 939 pin motherboard, these are available from ebay at relatively cheap prices.